"Philip, pray don't!" cried Lady Marabout, piteously.
"Or, we shall welcome under the Marabout wing a young lady fresh from convent walls and pensionnaire flirtations, who astonishes a dinner-party by only taking the first course, on the score of jours maigres and conscientious scruples; who is visited by révérends pères from Farm Street, and fills your drawing-room with High Church curates, whom she tries to draw over from their 'mother's' to their 'sister's' open arms; who goes every day to early morning mass instead of taking an early morning canter, and who, when invited to sing at a soirée musicale, begins 'Sancta Maria adorata!'"
"Philip, don't!" cried Lady Marabout. "Bark at him, Bijou, the heartless man! It is as likely as not little Montolieu may realize one of your horrible sketches. Ah, Philip, you don't know what the worries of a chaperone are!"
"Thank Heaven, no!" laughed Carruthers.
"It is easy to make a joke of it, and very tempting, I dare say—one's woes always are amusing to other people, they don't feel the smart themselves, and only laugh at the grimace it forces from one—but I can tell you, Philip, it is anything but a pleasant prospect to have to go about in society with a girl one may be ashamed of!—I don't know anything more trying; I would as soon wear paste diamonds as introduce a girl that is not perfectly good style."
"But why not have thought of all this in time?"
Lady Marabout sank back in her chair, and curled Bijou's ears, with a sigh.
"My dear Philip, if everybody always thought of things in time, would there be any follies committed at all? It's precisely because repentance comes too late, that repentance is such a horrible wasp, with such a merciless sting. Besides, could I refuse poor Lilla Montolieu, unhappy as she is with that bear of a man?"
"I never felt more anxious in my life," thought Lady Marabout, as she sat before the fire in her drawing-room—it was a chilly April day—stirring the cream into her pre-prandial cup of tea, resting one of her small satin-slippered feet on Bijou's back, while the firelight sparkled on the Dresden figures, the statuettes, the fifty thousand costly trifles, in which the Marabout rooms equalled any in Belgravia. "I never felt more anxious—not on any of Philip's dreadful yachting expeditions, nor even when he went on that perilous exploring tour into Arabia Deserta, I do think. If she should be unpresentable—and then poor dear Lilla's was not much of a match, and the girl will not have a sou, she tells me frankly; I can hardly hope to do anything for her. There is one thing, she will not be a responsibility like Valencia or Cecil, and what would have been a bad match for them will be a good one for her. She must accept the first offer made her, if she have any at all, which will be very doubtful; few Benedicts bow to Beatrices nowadays, unless Beatrice is a good 'investment,' as they call it. She will soon be here. That is the carriage now stopped, I do think. How anxious I feel! Really it can't be worse for a Turkish bridegroom never to see his wife's face till after the ceremony than it is for one not to have seen a girl till one has to introduce her. If she shouldn't be good style!"
And Lady Marabout's heart palpitated, possibly prophetically, as she set down her little Sèvres cup and rose out of her arm-chair, with Bijou shaking his silver collar and bells, to welcome the new inmate of Lowndes Square, with her sunny smile and her kindly voice, and her soft beaming eyes, which, as I have often stated, would have made Lady Marabout look amiable at an Abruzzi bandit who had demanded her purse, or an executioner who had led her out to capital punishment, and now made her radiate, warm and bright, on a guest whose advent she dreaded. Hypocrisy, you say. Not a bit of it! Hypocrisy may be eminently courteous, but take my word for it, it's never cordial! There are natures who throw such golden rays around them naturally, as there are others who think brusquerie and acidity cardinal virtues, and deal them out as points of conscience; are there not sunbeams that shine kindly alike on fragrant violet tufts and barren brambles, velvet lawns and muddy trottoirs? are there not hail-clouds that send jagged points of ice on all the world pêle-mêle, as mercilessly on the broken rose as on the granite boulder?